Bland Beginning (22 page)

“But I am sorry to see from your appearance that you have been in what we rather inexactly call the wars. Janet was anxious when you failed to return last night; and so,” he added mildly, “was I. We were greatly relieved by your telephone call this morning which assured us that your injuries were minor. I gather that you trapped a gang of ruffians single-handed, but were unable to deliver them into the hands of the police.”

Anthony found himself, as always, petrified into silence by this badinage. At last he said sulkily, “My head aches,” and sat down.

“My dear boy. Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yes. I saw the police doctor this morning and he says there’s no damage done. Suppose the old skull’s too thick.” He added, with an obscure feeling of self-justification, “A whole gang of them set on me, cracked me on the head, and tied me up.” His father was busying himself with a whisky decanter at the sideboard. “Seen a lot of the police today. Somebody shot that chap Cobb.”

“So I saw from the evening paper.” His father did not turn round. “Did the man get away?”

“Clean away. Bolted through the back garden.”

Mr Shelton squirted soda. “Have the police any clues?”

“Lord knows. This old man Cobb left a statement about a lot of things supposed to be forged by a chap called Amberside, but he didn’t say anything about that little book I bought. It’s all too deep for me. Wish to God I’d never bought the thing.”

“So do I.” Mr Shelton brought over two large glasses of whisky. “From every point of view.”

Anthony drank some whisky. His head really was aching, and his perceptions were even less acute than usual, but he was aware of something odd in his father’s tone.

“Have you ever considered, Anthony, where money comes from? Do you know the nature of my occupation, which provides you with a comfortable home?”

“Eh?” Anthony was altogether startled, and not at all capable of dealing with such questions, even though he had speculated on them himself not long before. “Why – something in the City. Stocks and shares.”

“‘Something’. But you don’t know what.” Anthony shook his bandaged head in a doglike way. “I am a company director.”

“Oh.” Anthony was very little wiser.

“One of my companies – Antiguan Commercial Enterprises – ceased to be quoted on the Stock Exchange last week. Another, Brazilian Tractors Limited, dropped ten points. Yet another, the East African Mining Syndicate, dropped from eighteen shillings to ten shillings, and there are no dealings at the lower price.”

Mr Shelton’s tone was conversational, and Anthony was deceived. “Oh, really,” he said in a tone of polite disinterest, and his father’s self-control snapped. Just for a moment his brown face was contorted with a rage that Anthony had seen in his father only once or twice in his life. He leaned over the chair, in which his son was sitting, and shouted at him: “You don’t understand what it means, do you, you dunderhead? Let me tell you, it means that just now I’m on the very edge of ruin. Things may go right or they may go wrong in the next twenty-four hours – and if they go wrong there’ll be no more Bentley cars and hundred-guinea books. I don’t know what sin I’ve committed, that God gave me a son with a thick skull and nothing inside it, but perhaps you can understand
that
.”

Anthony sat bolt upright as though an electric shock had been passed through him. Then in a tone not devoid of dignity he said, “Yes, father. I can understand that.”

“And this is the time you choose to buy hundred-guinea books, to get yourself engaged to a doctor’s simpering daughter, and, above all things, to get yourself mixed up in a murder case.” He paced up and down. “Don’t tell me that you don’t see what that’s got to do with it. You never have seen anything, and you never will. Don’t you think it was useful to me when you got your Blue? Don’t you understand that it would have given confidence to the rich fools I have to deal with if you’d been playing for Southshire and coming to my office outside the cricket season and engaged to the kind of rich young woman who would have been dazzled by your appearance? Don’t you realise that it’s the finishing touch that now – at this, of all times – you should be mixed up in this murder case? But no, you don’t realise anything.”

Anthony sat staring up at his father. Under the white bandage, his great ox-eyes were scared. “I’ll come and work with you, if you want me to, father. I never thought I should be any use.”

The storm of Mr Shelton’s anger passed as abruptly as it had come, and he was again a small brown man in a neat blue suit. “I’m sorry,” he said, and put his hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to say any of that. And I didn’t mean it either. I only wanted you to know how things stood, so that if there does come any question – if things do go wrong –” He left the sentence unfinished, and crossed again to the sideboard. “Have some more whisky, and tell me more about Cobb and that fellow Amberside.” Anthony told him, and the brown man listened with keen interest. “Extraordinary,” he said at intervals. “Extraordinary.”

Anthony’s fingers moved round and round his glass. He trembled for some moments on the verge of speech, and then got up and moved towards the door. “What you were saying earlier, father,” he said, when he had hold of the door handle, “about Vicky – and our marriage – I don’t think you need worry.” Mr Shelton looked his surprise. “I think it’s all off” Anthony said, and fled before he could be questioned.

Basingstoke’s young friend, whose name was Bland, sat up late on Thursday night, making notes on the story that had been told to him. He went to sleep and woke up thinking about it on Friday morning. He thought about it while he washed, brushed his teeth and ate a breakfast of toast, marmalade and coffee. Then he washed up, meditating on questions of literary forgery and murder. He reflected with pleasure on the fortunate circumstance that he had taken this week for his summer holiday. It had been spent partly in the Courts and partly in the theatre (he maintained that one could learn a great deal about criminal psychology by watching a good actor); and now his holiday allowed him to visit the public library and return, within half an hour, with a copy of the standard edition of
Passion and Repentance
, and two or three books of criticism which mentioned it. The sunlight shone through the glass skylight and brightened one half of the room; the other half was permanently in the shade.

Bland read first of all the critics’ view of the book, which he found in general unenlightening. They praised, or disparaged, imagery and metre – “vivid” and “unhealthy” were words much used – but admirers and detractors were singularly uninformative about the subject of the poems. “He writes with power, and a frankness many will deprecate as unseemly, of his own marriage,” wrote the Victorian, R H Hutton; while a modern critic observed that “The poems express continually and monotonously, in metaphors restricted but powerful, the warring of Puritanism and sensuality in the poet’s complicated nature. It is of no particular poetic relevance to remark that these sonnets obviously had their origin in the author’s married life; and although human curiosity makes it inevitable that we should wonder just what facets of Rawlings’ marriage drove him to rid his bosom of such perilous stuff, it would be both idle and impertinent to carry these speculations into uncomfortable detail.” It might be impertinent, Bland thought with some irritation, but could hardly be called idle just at this moment of time. He turned to the book, and read the first poem in the series:

Adam to Eve: “This breast hard as an apple,

These slim, straight thighs, are built from dung and dirt.

The vitriol sucked from each tautened nipple

Runs in the veins of all whom life has hurt.

What is man born to but a long denying,

Who one day says, I will be good forever

And in an hour feels on him like a fever

The dark desire that leads to loss and sighing?”

And Eve to Adam: “Enter my strong arms,

Rest there at peace, and close those guilt-dazed eyes

That long have seen mirages of content.

Sleep, sleep; absorb my image and my scent,

Receive this benison of love that warms

The spirit to a human Paradise.”

Poetry was at any time less congenial reading to the young man than accounts of famous trials, and he began to think the interpretation of poetry no less complicated. He read this first sonnet three times, and then made no more of it than that the poet considered love as something desirable but wicked, and that the female principle (represented by “Eve”) lured men away from good towards evil. He sighed a little, and read on. In an hour he had finished the little book, and methodically began to make notes on it.

The notes, however, were really no more than an extension of Basingstoke’s remarks on the previous evening. The first twenty sonnets might be called passionate and the next repentant, he reflected, although the repentance itself was both self-pitying and in itself highly passionate. It did seem, however, that the first twenty poems celebrated “sin” with a good deal of zest, in obscure metaphors, and that the last twenty expressed regret for sinning. When Bland had got as far as this with his notes, he put down his pencil in despair. Perhaps he was altogether wrong in thinking that there was some connection between the text of this book and the case. Or perhaps, after all, as Basingstoke had suggested, there was a secret attached to one particular copy. He ruffled the pages absently, and they opened at the twentieth sonnet – the halfway point, and the culmination of the poems of “Passion”:

Out of the sighs and anguish beauty comes.

Or is it beauty? Can we give the name

To what’s begot in stealth and sin and shame,

To lute of Lucifer and devil’s drums?

Look then upon this face, unearthly fair,

And radiant with everlasting wrong,

And wonder at what makes a poet’s song,

Grieve at the heavy burden humans share.

For all, all share it: this small errant son,

The germ of darkness and ecstatic joy,

That tender mother cradling her boy,

And most of all this lover of the sun.

Who stretches arms to woman, not to God,

Makes for his back a ripe and eager rod.

As he read and re-read these lines they changed from almost meaningless rhetoric into words weighty with a meaning that clarified the whole case: they joined with the other sonnets and the drawing on Jebb’s blotter and the theft of copies of the book and with many other facts to make a picture that was not complete, but was within its limits clear. He sat for a little while with his fair head above the book, thinking of what he had been told, and of what he had read. Then he consulted a date and some details in an old
Who’s Who,
and an illustration in another book on his shelf. It seemed that these were what he had expected, for he nodded. He wandered aimlessly round the great room, rubbing his finger on the tops of books as if to assure himself that they were not dusty, pulling straight the counterpane on his bed. Then he slapped his hand on the table, said “Of course,” picked up a trilby hat and almost ran out of the dungeon room, slamming the door after him. In the street he jumped on to a moving bus, changed on to another, and booked a fare to Blackheath.

Vicky woke with a bad taste in her mouth, and a feeling that something was wretchedly wrong. She saw that she had overslept. The time was half-past nine. In her misery and self-absorption on the previous night she had forgotten to set the alarm.

Such a happening can lend a tone to the whole day. Her sense of injury was not decreased by the facts that the water ran lukewarm from the hot tap, and that the haddock for breakfast was almost cold. She made a poor breakfast, but sat on at the table reading the paper, and had just found an interesting item about the arrival in London of the King and Queen of Italy, with the handsome Prince of Piedmont, when the telephone rang in the hall. As she went to answer it, Edward popped his head out of the dispensary. She took off the receiver, heard Anthony’s voice and turned to Edward, who was hovering uneasily. “Oh – it’s for you, is it?” he said. “Didn’t know you were up. Come in and see me when you’ve finished, will you?” She nodded, and the baize door leading into his dispensary closed.

“Hullo,” she said.

“Hullo, is that you, Vicky? This is Anthony.” She made no reply to an observation so self-evident. “I just wondered how you were. If you got home all right, and all that.”

“Perfectly, thank you. I came by train.”

“Oh, that’s good. Jolly good. But I say, you should have waited for me, you know.”

“You were busy talking to Uncle Jack.”

“Oh, yes,” Anthony said with noticeable constraint, and offered no explanation of that mysterious conversation.

“How’s your head?” she asked, and he responded eagerly: “Much better, thanks. Taken off the bandage today. Bit of a swelling, but nothing really.” She almost heard a deep breath being taken, and then a kind of roar came out of the telephone. “I say, Vicky old girl, sorry about that spot of trouble we had. All my fault. Do forgive me. Can’t we meet and have a talk?”

She heard him with delight, but it would never do to show it. She said airily, “I’d really forgotten about it – you were being so silly.” It would never do to show him that she was anxious to see him. He could take her over to Uncle Jack’s tomorrow. “I’m awfully busy today. What are you doing tomorrow afternoon? I could see you then if you like.”

There was a stammer of dismay. “To-tomorrow afternoon. Well, as a matter of fact, Vicky, you see –”

“You’re busy?” she said sharply. “Don’t bother to explain.”

“No, it’s not – well, yes, I am busy but – it’s something I can’t put off. Tomorrow morning I could –”

“Don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account. Goodbye.” She banged down the receiver and, without giving herself a chance to consider what she had done, charged through the green-baize door where Edward was sitting, looking very worried indeed. “I’ve found the adrenaline,” he said.

“Oh, have you? That’s one trouble the less. Where was it?”

“That’s the extraordinary thing,” Edward said with gloomy triumph. “It wasn’t in the poisons cupboard. It was on the shelf among all the other things – not at all where it should have been. I can’t think how it got there.”

“Perhaps you put it there yourself by mistake,” she suggested, and he looked at her severely.

“Please don’t be flippant. It might be very serious if this bottle got into unauthorised hands. The action of adrenaline stimulates the heart, and if administered to somebody whose heart was weak –” He held up a small bottle, and shook his head gravely.

“I suppose you’ve handled that bottle thoroughly, so that there’s no chance of any finger-prints being found on it?” she said crossly. “Yes; I thought so. Can you remember how much was in it? Does any seem to be missing?”

“As a matter of fact,” Edward said reluctantly, “there doesn’t seem to be any missing at all.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“I don’t know.” Edward ran a hand through his thin hair. “Yes, I do. It’s all your fault.” She looked at him in surprise. “I’ve had one or two lapses of memory lately. They are quite brief and so far as I can discover I act in a perfectly rational manner during them, but they are none the less distressing. I attribute them to worry about the practice, aggravated by this affair in which you’ve got involved.”

“Nonsense,” said Vicky briskly. “Anyway, you say the adrenaline’s all there. Do you know what I should do about those lapses of memory, if I were you?” He looked at her enquiringly. “I should see a doctor.” She went off into peals of laughter.

“I’ve asked you before not to be flippant. I feel a strong sense of responsibility. After all, I am head of the family.”

“This branch of it.” He looked at her again with apparent lack of comprehension, and she said, “Uncle Jack’s the head of the family, if you want to use such phrases.” He was still staring at her when the telephone bell rang again, and she said hurriedly, “I’ll answer it.” The voice that spoke to her was not Anthony’s, but another that in its oily gratiness seemed unpleasantly familiar. After a moment she recognised it as that of Inspector Wrax.

“Miss Rawlings? I wonder if you can oblige me with a little information? Can you tell me the year of birth of the members of your family?”

“What?” She could not believe her ears.

With elaborate patience, the Inspector repeated, “The year of birth of the various members of your family. Your father died three years ago, I believe.”

“Yes.”

“That leaves, then, your mother, your brother and your-self; your uncle, and – I understand your uncle has a son.”

“Yes.”

“If you can give me this information it will save some routine enquiries, and I shall be most grateful to you. Are you there, Miss Rawlings?”

“What do you want to know for?”

The Inspector lubricated his voice a little. “It is purely a matter of routine. Of course, if you are unwilling to assist us –” He left the sentence in the air, and Vicky paused to consider.

“Why should I be?”

“Exactly,” the Inspector said heartily. “Why should you be?”

“My mother is fifty-four years old – that is, she was born in –”

“Eighteen-seventy,” the Inspector said. “Her maiden name was Muriel Parks, wasn’t it?”

“I – yes, I believe it was.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Yes, of course I know. But what can my mother’s maiden name have to do with this affair?”

“Nothing at all, very likely,” said the Inspector soothingly. “And your brother?”

“He was born in 1896 – he’s twenty-eight; and I was born four years later – I’m twenty-four this year. Uncle Jack is sixty-three – that means he was born in –”

“Eighteen-sixty-one.”

“Yes, that’s right. And his wife died ten years ago, just before the war began, when Philip was seven years old – so he was born in 1907.”

“That’s most helpful, Miss Rawlings. I’m very much obliged to you.” He rang off before she had time to ask the questions that were at the tip of her tongue. Edward’s head was poked round the baize door again. “Who was that?” he asked.

“The police inspector.” She stood with her hand on the black telephone, as if she were mesmerised.

“And what did
he
want?” Edward asked pettishly. When she told him he was more annoyed than astonished. “Really, I do call that unwarrantable. He’s prying into our private affairs. I trust you didn’t tell him.”

“Of course I did.”

“You should have left him to find it out for himself.” Edward fidgeted with a waistcoat button. “The whole thing is a calamity. People are looking at me in the street in a very peculiar way, and I can’t say that I blame them. What did he want with that information?”

Vicky took her hand off the telephone. She had suddenly remembered Anthony’s evasiveness. “How the devil should I know?”

The day was bright and warm when Basingstoke’s young friend got off his bus at Blackheath station and walked briskly up Peaceful Vale. Within two minutes he was away from the brisk grocery and greengrocery shops of the village. Quiet Georgian houses with decorous front gardens lined one side of the road, confronted by equally subdued and respectable shops. Bland stopped before one of these, which bore the name “Lewis” outside in lettering of faded gold; this shop was more unobtrusive, even, than the rest, for its front shutters were closed. He rapped tentatively upon the shutters and heard a faint and curious noise inside, which he presently identified as the miaowing of a cat. He walked down a narrow alleyway at the side of the shop, and stopped before a green door, which was a side entrance to the bookshop. Outside this door he noticed, with a faint feeling of surprise, two quart bottles of milk. The green door opened on to a back garden and a path led through the garden to what was presumably the door of the small house, which contained the bookshop. This door was open and from inside it the shadow of a man stretched out into the sunlit garden. The shadow, to be exact, was not that of a man, but of the lower half of a man, and it was cast, solid and seemingly permanent, with its vast legs extending down the asphalt path outside the door. The young man Bland stood with his hand on the latch of the green door, aware that there was something very wrong with this shadow, but unable to analyse his knowledge; until suddenly he realised that a man standing in a doorway, with the light behind him, does not throw the shadow of his feet but of his head, so that it should be an enormous head, and not enormous feet, visible outside this kitchen door. The man inside, then, was in some way defying the law of gravity, but as Bland came to that conclusion his attention was drawn from it by a sudden sharp pain in his left leg. He looked down, startled, to see a great blue Persian cat stretching against him, and staring up at him out of reflective amber eyes.